“Scrum” refers to an agile software development technique which aims to deliver products iteratively and incrementally, while maximizing opportunities for feedback. One significant difference between Scrum and more traditional software development is that Scrum is designed to effectively accommodate changing requirements, even at a late stage of development. To define various objectives in Scrum, so-called “user stories” are often used. User stores provide a quick way of describing customer requirements without having to create formalized requirements documents. Utilizing concise user stories helps to facilitate fast responses to rapidly changing requirements with less overhead. An example user story could be, for example, “as a user closing the application, I want to be prompted to save if I have made any change in my data since the last save.” Another example user story could include “as a buyer, I want to see all the products I chose in my shopping cart” or “as a seller, I want to see a list and quantity of all the products sold in a history page.” Thus, user stories typically identify a type of user, and a feature that the user would expect to see in a certain place and/or at a certain time.
A primary defining characteristic of Scrum is the so-called “sprint” which is a basic unit of development corresponding to a limited period of time (e.g., between two weeks and a month) during which Scrum teams aim to achieve a clearly-defined objective. Given their defined duration, sprints are described as being “time-boxed.” By adopting the iterative and incremental approach of sprints, software developers have found the Scrum technique to be an effective framework for software development in a group setting.
During a given sprint, a “daily Scrum” (also known as a “daily stand-up”) is typically conducted on a daily basis to review how a accomplishments from a preceding day advanced the sprint goal, to review goals of the current work day, and/or to review any impediments to meetings those goals. These daily meetings are themselves time-boxed (often limited to 15 minutes), and a white board is often used to facilitate group communication.